Thousands of websites including Reddit and Tumblr are today staging an online
protest called The Day We Fight Back against mass surveillance by the US
government

More than 6,000 websites are today staging a protest against mass surveillance and calling on the public to sign a petition demanding that any NSA intrusion is lawful and proportional to potential threats. It also demands public oversight of the intelligence service.

The protest, which is being called The Day We Fight Back, is being backed by websites such as Reddit, Tumblr and BoingBoing and campaign groups including the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Greenpeace and the American Civil Liberties Union.

The protest website says: “Together we will push back against powers that seek to observe, collect, and analyse our every digital action. Together, we will make it clear that such behaviour is not compatible with democratic governance. Together, if we persist, we will win this fight.”

US visitors to those websites taking part will see a banner allowing them to directly contact their member of Congress and call for an end to mass surveillance, while those from other countries will have the chance to sign a petition. At the time of publication the petition had 87,320 signatures and 19,372 emails had been sent to members of Congress.

Over the last year the true scale of NSA surveillance has emerged, largely due to documents leaked by former contractor Edward Snowden. Revelations include the NSA harvesting phone records from 120 million Verizon customers and spying on diplomatic missions of the EU.

More unusual leaks showed that the NSA and GCHQ sent spies into online games to seek out terrorist or criminal chat and even to recruit foreign informants. Intelligence operatives feared that games such as Second Life and World of Warcraft could be used to secretly communicate, move money or plot terrorist attacks, all under the radar of existing snooping abillity. The security agencies were already able to intercept emails and phone calls, but many online games were considered possible safe havens for illegal activity.

Today there are also live demonstrations planned in Denmark, Stockholm and the US. In London this evening there will be an event including lectures on how to improve your online security as well as the launch of a campaign called Don’t Spy on Us, backed by Liberty and Privacy International, which calls for an inquiry into mass surveillance in the UK.

The day of protest falls on the eve of the death of political activist Aaron Swartz, a key developer behind the creation of RSS feeds, who killed himself after being charged with wire fraud and violations of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act for downloading scientific papers from MIT with the intention of making them freely available on the internet. Swartz faced 35 years in prison for his crimes.

Swartz had been involved in a similar online protest against the Stop Online Privacy Act which was proposed in the US to stop copyright infringement. Critics said that the powers would give the government authority to block entire domains such as Wordpress.com because a single page displayed one piece of infringing content.

On January 18 2012 thousands of websites stage black-outs to raise awareness. Two days later the proposed legislation was dropped.

David Segal, executive director of campaign group Demand Progress, which he co-founded with Swartz, said: "Today the greatest threat to a free internet, and broader free society, is the National Security Agency's mass spying regime. If Aaron were alive he'd be on the front lines, fighting back against these practices that undermine our ability to engage with each other as genuinely free human beings."